A mix-up involving an absent reader meant that we omitted what was going to be the fourth of five Old Testament readings (Isaiah 55, followed by an adaptation of Bob Hurd’s With joy you shall draw water). New this year was the second reading, telling the story of Abraham and Isaac. The accompanying psalm was our first from Patrick Killeen’s collection Sing a New Psalm.

Bishop John intoned the Gloria and the Alleluia (the latter to the simple Easter tone), and sang the Preface, and his part in the dialogues in the Eucharistic Prayer and at the Dismissal. In all, it was our customary musical feast, ranging from chant, through Victoria and Lassus, to Marty Haugen and David Haas. I’d like to think our music succeeded in serving the ritual needs of a rich and complex liturgy, in a welcoming diversity of musical idioms.

4 April 2015

Like yesterday’s celebration, today’s was a small, simple and prayerful gathering. Musically we kept things very similar to yesterday, with a few changes among the psalm tones, and a different hymn tune (Westminster Abbey, this time) for part two of the hymn, beginning at Faithful Cross. I’m sure this will become a regular fixture in our Holy Week celebrations.

3 April 2015

A new departure for us this year was a sung celebration of the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer on Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The psalms were sung antiphonally to psalm tones in the style of Laurence Bévenot, taken either from the various collections of Responsorial Psalms, or written by me in the same idiom. Numbers were small: today we had ten in the choir and fourteen in the congregation, plus our celebrant Fr Michael and Anthony on the organ, but in the more enclosed space of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel this worked very nicely, and the two halves of the singing assembly joined in gamely with the two halves of the choir in singing the psalms. We sang the opening hymn (part one of Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle) to the tune St. Thomas, and the Benedictus in Bernadette Farrell’s setting of the text versified by Owen Alstott.

Sung Prayer of the Church has hardly featured in the life of the Cathedral, over recent years at least – I can remember it twice in the last 25 years – but today’s celebration worked well, and felt like something we should do more often.

The Altar of Repose tonight was situated in the Cathedral’s Blessed Sacrament Chapel in the south transept. To the best of my knowledge this was the first time this part of the building had been used as a liturgical space in many years, but it felt highly appropriate. We used the same space over the next two days for the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer, which made for a nice connection as we watched and waited in different ways over the course of the three days.

Earlier, Bishop John had followed Pope Francis’s lead in washing women’s feet as well as men’s. It wasn’t the first time at the Cathedral – I remember it from a dozen or so years ago when Fr John Dale was Dean – and it felt for all the world like it had always been done this way.

Choral scholar Seb Marshall conducted us in the Duruflé with sensitivity and skill.

The sun shone on our processions along Chapel Street, as the priests and people of the Diocese gathered for the first time under Bishop John for our annual Holy Thursday celebration. Click on the links above to hear some of the music.

Heavy rain meant having to assemble for the blessing of palms in the north transept. (‘Liturgical North’, that is; it’s actually on the west side of the building.) It made for a splendidly reverberant acoustic for Chris Mueller’s setting of the Entrance Antiphon, and the procession around the church interior recovered from temporary gridlock when some kind souls made way to let the choir get to their seats. Later, we were conducted in the Bruckner by choral scholar Richard Platt, making his (very competent) choral conducting debut.

Welcome

This is a record of musical activities at St John's Cathedral, Salford - what we've been doing and what's coming up, and some thoughts on the musical planning process. You can also find information about joining the choir, and about our choral scholarships program.